Current Topic: Conversion

If you're a food lover, chances are you've been lured by a mouth-watering package design at least once. But did you know that the shape and color of packaging can also affect your perception of taste? The days where the sole purpose of a product’s packaging was to protect its content are over. As visual creatures, we often base our purchase decisions on the visual appearance of products. That’s why packaging plays a key role in setting product-related expectations. Packaging design can communicate a product's quality, value, and taste, which can influence consumers' purchasing decisions.

But how exactly can packaging design influence our taste expectations of food and beverage products?

When ordering food online, the number of unhealthy food cues seems endless. Not only the food itself but also food-related words and pictorial representations stimulate unhealthy dietary behaviors. And that while eating-behavior-related disorders are only increasing in the western world. Therefore, governments started public health campaigns and educational programmes to promote healthier food choices. Nevertheless, with little success.

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in using behavioral economics principles to "nudge" individuals towards making healthier and more sustainable choices. One area where these nudges may be particularly effective is in reducing food waste and increasing vegetable intake.

Maybe it’s just me, but the food labels communicating the  amount of calories on the back of food packages don't always speak to me. Don’t get me wrong, when I see a label stating “840 kcal” on the back of my nicely smelling pizza, it does hurt a bit. But, anything less than those extremes is hard to grasp for me, and the lazy person I am, I tend to skip this information instead of going online to find out what it exactly means. 

In 2016, we shared an interesting study on how food arrangement can be used to nudge us towards healthier choices: How To Make People Prefer A Dry Salad Over A Tasty Cheeseburger.

The study demonstrated that choice for healthy foods can be increased by simply displaying them on the left side of their lesser healthy counterparts. For example, displaying the salads on the left page of a restaurant menu, and the burgers on the right page, will lead significantly more patrons to order the former. In similar vein, supermarkets whose shelfs display healthier options to the left side will bear a similar positive influence on our health.

Will a few design tricks put a stop to the epidemic of obesity? Likely not – but as goes for many small adjustments in our daily lives: they compound and make a substantial difference in the long run. Now, a new study has been published that further explores under what circumstances the healthy left effect is likely to arise.